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“What a coincidence! This is starting to feel like fate,” a loud voice boomed out at me, easily heard, even over the crowd.
I blinked up at the tall figure standing beside me. My brain took a moment to attach a name to the newly familiar face. “Warner?” Isabelle’s cousin, the football player.
He stepped along the row and sat in the seat next to me. A friend tagged along behind him and waved to me and Lily.
“Hi, I’m Justin,” he said, reaching around Warner to shake my hand. “And you are?”
“My new girlfriend,” Warner quipped as he settled an arm around my back.
I stiffened, and he looked down and chuckled at my expression. “Sorry, getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?”
“Okay. He is just as hot as last time I saw him,” Lily whispered in my ear.
I elbowed her to be quiet, twisting away so Warner would get the hint and move his arm. Before he could, a hard bang sounded from just in front of us, so loud and sudden I jumped. The puck had hit the boards right across from us, the impact so violent it left a mark on the plastic safety partition.
A player skated up to the glass, staring in our general direction as he went. He slapped a gloved hand against the mark and then skated away at the last second to shoot off around the rink again.
“Who the hell was that? Someone is out for blood tonight,” Warner laughed.
“Beckett,” Lily muttered to me and rolled her eyes.
Number four was well known for being violent on the ice.
“Anderson? I heard he only made the team because his dad funded the entire athletic department,” Justin leaned forward to say.
“He’s a really good player, though. Have you seen him? No one gets past him,” Warner enthused and then faced me. “So, Eve, are you excited for the second round of tryouts? I bet your boyfriend isn’t sure about you becoming a cheerleader.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I corrected him automatically and raised an eyebrow when he grinned wider. “You could have just asked me if I did.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Warner laughed. “Anyway, about the squad. I’d love to make sure I get you to the games we’re playing this year. And I bet you’d look killer in their new uniforms.”
The unexpected and not entirely wanted compliment pulled my attention from the game. Was he flirting with me? If felt heavy-handed and gross. I had too much going on in my head with Beckett and that disaster to think about flirting with some rando. “Sorry, what?”
Warner smirked, seeming pleased he’d caught my attention. Before he could respond, another loud crash came from the boards across from us. Beckett had plowed a member of the opposite team into the uncompromising surface. Blood sprayed across the plastic, mere feet away from our faces.
“Wow! Number four, that’s what I’m talking about!” Warner yelled.
The crowd cheered.
Beckett was staring in our direction, but I couldn’t make out his eyes beneath his cage.
Talk of cheerleading was forgotten as we got absorbed in the game.
It turned out I wasn’t the only one missing Asher. The Hellions had won, but it wasn’t the easy victory that everyone hadexpected. The new teammates weren’t gelling well, and the Ice Gods were off their game. Asher’s absence had loomed large over the entire rink.
Still, the Hellions had won, and after the Hellions won, they partied.
We went to the Hellions’ dorm,my dorm, where the music was already loud and half the people inside were drunk. I wasn’t sure at all about the number of people packed into the building. The main area of the party seemed to be taking place in apartment one, which belonged to the senior members of the team, some of whom had already been recruited into the NHL.
Inside, the apartment was packed to the seams.
“Let’s get a drink,” I shouted in Lily’s ear.
We made our way to the kitchen.
“Eve?”
I whirled around at the sound of my name. “Isabelle!” I hugged my new friend.
